McAdams’s face darkened. “No prob, boss. What I think doesn’t matter anyway.”

Decker shrugged and finished his bagel. He wiped his hands, put the key in the ignition, and started up the engine. “There’s a CPR class at the hospital this Sunday. It’s given by the local Red Cross. I could use a refresher. Want to come with me?”

“No, I don’t . . .” McAdams stopped himself. “Yeah, sure, why not. I’ll come. Never can tell when a date might choke on a potato chip.” He stared out the window. “Next thing I know, you’ll be asking me to come down to the shooting range.”

Decker pulled the car onto the highway. “I’d be happy to give you a few pointers.”

“I don’t own a gun.”

“That can be remedied. I’m most comfortable with a Beretta 92FS or 92F 9 mm: they’re standard LAPD issue. Do you know anything about guns and ammo?”

“Mike taught me a few things about slugs and casings and bullets from different types of guns. Since it hasn’t been remotely relevant to anything I’ve done here, I don’t remember much.”

“It won’t take you long to learn if you’re interested.”

“I’m interested.”

“What about going to the range with me?”

The kid sighed. “Sure.”

“Good. I’ll get a gun for you and we can start whenever you want.”

McAdams clenched his jaw. “I’m having a hard time figuring you out . . . whether you’re friend or foe.”

“I’m, neither, Harvard. I’m a professional. I want a partner who knows CPR in case I choke on a potato chip. As far as the guns go, I don’t expect it to happen, but should we ever be in a situation with our backs to the wall, I’d prefer a partner who could shoot. And I do apologize for not telling you about Ben’s text. It was during the family dinner and Rina said no business. And then because I’m senile, I forgot to tell you.”

“I know I’m being touchy and obnoxious.” A pause. “So you consider me your partner.”

“I’ve been assigned to ride with you, so yes, you are at present my partner. And for a rookie who hasn’t had much formal police training, you’re not half bad. And if you’d lose the chip on your shoulder, you could be very good because you’re not only smart, you’re organized and that’s even more important than smart. And since you are my current partner, I’d appreciate if you stopped calling me Old Man. I don’t need to be reminded of my age.”

McAdams tried stifling a smile. It didn’t work. “I don’t mean anything by it, but if it’s important to you, I’ll stop.”

Decker waited a beat. “Maybe I’m being touchy. I’ll stop calling you Harvard if it bothers you.”

“It did bother me at first . . . like you were mocking me.” A pause. “Were you mocking me?”

“Of course.”

“You can call me Harvard although it’s not such a badge of honor. Lots of mediocre minds there.” A smile. “I’m just not one of them.”

Decker smiled and pointed to the kid’s iPhone. “As long as I’m driving, start phoning the Boston galleries on the list. They should be open by now. Let’s get a schedule going so we won’t be wasting time. We can start meeting with them at around 12:30. Our appointment with Chase Goddard isn’t until 3:00.”

“I can do that.” McAdams picked up the phone and regarded the list the two of them had prepared. “A lot of them are on Newbury Street. I’ll start there and pick up as many as we can do on foot. Parking is terrible. Once we find a spot, we’ll want to camp out as long as we can. I know you don’t mind walking. You certainly do a lot of it.”

“When you’re old like me, you take any exercise you can get.”

“I hope I’m as sharp as you are, Decker, when I’m your age. I don’t mean that as a compliment, just a fact.” The kid started making phone calls. His voice sounded pleasant but professional. He was focused and all business. And that was the way it should be. He was doing the job. If the job was done well, the trust and finally friendship would come later on. Tyler had a long way to go before he’d prove himself. But he was getting there, working without complaint. In this so-called entitled generation, that was pretty good.

CHAPTER 22

OPENING A LOCKED cabinet, Detective Chris Mulrooney took out a spiral blue notebook with gloved hands. “We found it this morning, hidden behind a paneled door in the bathtub enclosure where a Jacuzzi motor should have been. The pipes were capped off.” He opened up to a random page. “English letters, Greek letters, Cyrillic letters, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, crap that looks like cuneiform. It’s some kind of code.”

Decker slipped on a latex glove. “Can I take a look?”

“Knock yourself out.” Mulrooney was short, squat, and bald with a constant smile on his face, like he loved what he was doing and loved life in general. He wore a sweater over an oxford weave shirt, slacks, and rubber-soled shoes. “You find anything in code in the girl’s apartment?”

“No, we didn’t.” Decker felt McAdams peering over his shoulder, mouthing words in a whisper. “You make any sense of this, Harvard?”

“Can I take a closer look?”

“Yeah, but glove up,” Mulrooney said. “We’ve dusted it for prints and came up dry, but we’ll give it a second go. Our victim might have been some kind of language guy. I know he was smart. He won some kind of prestigious award.”

“The Windsor Prize,” Decker said.

“Yeah, that’s it. I put a call into the committee office and got an answering machine. I don’t know if I’ll get a call back soon because the prize is given every four years. When I talked to the people in his department, they told me that he got a two-year lectureship because of the award.”

“What did his colleagues have to say?”

“The usual. They’re all shocked by his murder, he was a quiet guy. And he was young: a lot younger than the professors around him.”

“What was he lecturing in?”

“His research was . . . hold on, let me get this right.” Mulrooney took out his notebook. “Political art and propaganda in the Soviet Union during the period between the two world wars. If I didn’t know about your vic and the stolen Tiffany windows, I would have assumed that he was one of these nerdy academic types who was killed for his research or something stupid like that . . . except, well, you saw the body. Someone was royally pissed off. That was one horrific crime. Not the cozy professor kind of killing.”

“Are we sure that this codebook belongs to Latham?” Decker said.

Mulrooney paused. “You think otherwise?”

“It could have been stolen. Both Latham’s and Angeline’s apartments were tossed.”

“Whoever did it had a lot of languages at his disposal.” McAdams was turning the pages. “We need a cryptologist to break this down. There are dozens of them at Harvard and MIT. They’d do it for you for fun.”

“Yeah, this city is filled with people who can do everything,” Mulrooney said. “Before I show this to anyone outside the department, I’d like to know what we’re dealing with. Latham was one nasty murder.”

“Latham came to Tufts for a lectureship?” Decker asked.

“A joint appointment for two years with the art department and IR. What Soviet art has to do with Tiffany panels, I don’t know. But he’s obviously an art guy. One art guy talks to another art guy and pretty soon, you’re an expert in something.”

“Where did he study before he came to Tufts?” Decker said. “I heard he went to Oxford.”

“Don’t recall seeing that. Hold on, lemme see what I got on him.” Mulrooney peered through some file folders. “Uh, he had a master’s of arts from the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Sounds like something political or an online scam.”

“CREES,” McAdams said. “It’s a legitimate university program. Hold on.” He started playing with his iPhone. “It’s for people who have an interest in foreign languages of those regions and who want to work for government and diplomacy. There’s a CREES at Harvard, there’s one at U Mich, there’s one at Kansas University, there’s one at Stanford, there’s one at U Texas—”